Already, the speculators and conspiracy-theorists are theorizing that Cardinal Bertone will be the next pope because, at least according to the dubious “prophecy of Saint Malachi,” the next pope after Pope Benedict XVI will be known as “Peter the Roman,” in part because his middle name, Pietro, is Italian for Peter. Some of these theorists are saying, Cardinal Bertone was “born in Rome.”

False. He was born in the Northern Italian town of Romano Canavese, in the Piedmont region, near the City of Turin.

Personally, I don’t buy into any of the hyped-up speculation about possible or probable papabili. My guess (and guessing is all anyone can do here) is that we will all be surprised by the election. For that matter, I’m not fazed by the speculation gyrations people are into right now. The Holy Spirit is in charge of this process and will write straight with the crooked lines we humans use.

So, all speculation and Saint Malachi stuff, aside, I will point out something that I believe is a genuinely interesting factoid about Cardinal Bertone : Namely,that he is a Salesian of Don Bosco, and Saint Don Bosco, as you will recall, had a prophetic dream about a future pope who will guide the Catholic Church through a fierce storm of attacks into a respite of calm and peace.

In his dream, Don Bosco saw the Church as a great three-masted ship being moored securely between two towering pillars representing the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin Mary. I think many Catholics today would agree that, however choppy the water may be right now, the Catholic Church seems to be headed straight into a dark and dangerous storm of gale proportions. Cardinal Francis George recently said as much when he commented prophetically that he expects to die in his bed, he expects his successor to die in prison, and he expects his successor’s successor to die a martyr’s death.

In several weeks’ time, once the new pope is elected, I may look back and laugh at this blog post. Very possibly someone completely unexpected will be elected (which, I tend to think is what will happen). And yet, for the moment at least, I am simply taking note of the fact that Cardinal Bertone is a Salesian, a disciple of Saint John Bosco. When it’s all said and done and we have our new pope, wouldn’t it be just a tad remarkable if the future pope whom Don Bosco saw in his dream turned out to be one of his own sons?